JOURNALISM

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JOURNALISM
NEWS IS TOMORROWS HISTORY done up in todays neat package. News is the fuel that keeps the wheels of a modern civilization turning. News is current information made available to the public about what is going on information often very important to men and women trying to make up their minds about what to think and how to act. News is timely, concise, accurate report of an event; it is not the event itself. Until the knowledge of an event is communicated, the event is not news.

THE NEWS CONCEPT AND THE RIGHT TO KNOW

In a complex world no man can learn for himself everything he would like to know about his society and his contemporaries lives. No man can be in a thousand places at once. No man can take the time to gather all the information he would like to have; few men have the breadth of knowledge and background to understand all he events.

HOW DOES THE AVERAGE CITIZEN GET THE INFORMATION HE WANTS? Word of mouth is one source. For the most part, however, the average citizen expects to get his information from the news media from the newspaper, the radio, television. In the United States every man has the right to know about matters that concern or interest him. The right of the people to information is the end; the freedom of the press and other media is the means. Because the people have the right to full and accurate information, the news media must be free to gather and report the facts. This right to know is the fundamental principle on which the American news concept is based.

THE GROWTH OF THE CONCEPT

Before there were newspapers in English, there were news-lettersreports of financial, social and political currents provided by professional letter-writers for friends or subscribers. In 1671 the British governor of Virginia declared that learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world; the printing has divulged them and libels against government Publick Occurances, a three-page paper published by Benjamin Harris in 1690, was suppressed after one issue because, in the governors opinion, it contained reflections of a very high nature New York Citys second newspaper rise in 1734 to the famous John Peter Zenger trial, in which it was determined that a jury rather than a governor had the right to decide whether or not the publication was libelous. The trial also introduced the principle that printing the truth was not criminally libelous and that, therefore, truth from any source could be published. These historic decisions helped establish the legal rights of a free press.

THE NEWS CONCEPT AND THE RIGHT TO KNOW

For many years the press continued primarily as a political instrument or as a special pleader rather than as a medium of general news. By 1830 the environment had begun to change. More Americans were becoming readers -- the advance of free education was beginning to make itself felt. As newspaper advertising revenue began to increase, publishers could envision less dependence on political subsidies and even on sales of their papers to readers. Faster presses and general improvement in printing processes meant that in an hour thousands of papers, instead of hundreds, could be produced.

THE GROWTH OF THE CONCEPT

During the time when the turbulence of a freedomseeking people was increasing to the point of rebellion, the press, despite its propagandistic character, was an important and stimulating informant. Thomas Jefferson and other leaders gave stirring expression and that such a government must exercise no suppression or censorship. When the nation took form in 1789 there was an insistent demand for government guarantee of a free press. Jefferson enthusiastically declared that he would prefer newspapers without government to government without newspapers.

THE GROWTH OF THE CONCEPT

In addition to the political difficulties experienced by the colonial newspapers, there were, technical difficulties in printing the news. The lack of swift of transportation and communication hampered the process of news gathering. Inadequate mechanical facilities presses were slow and paper was scare made for slow production, high costs, and limited distribution. Few readers who had money to buy and education to read newspaper. News in the colonial period was not what we take for granted it is today. The news that was printed was incomplete, not necessarily accurate or current, and certainly not objective.

THE NEWS CONCEPT AND THE RIGHT TO KNOW

In 1833 a young printer in New York, Benjamin H. Day, took advantage of all these changes and improvements to produce Americas first successful penny-paper the New York Sun. Ben Day not only put out a lo-cost daily in quantity, but also developed a new conception of news. He did not entirely ignore the solid news, the news of politics and government, but he cut down the quantity of it; he appealed to his wider audience by using unimportant soft news. He sent a reporter to New Yorks police court every day, and he Sun regularly gave its readers vignettes of the drunks, the petty thieves, the brawlers. The new public to whom Day appealed a public able to buy the paper because it cost only a penny quickly became greedy for this new kind of news fare.

THE GROWTH OF THE CONCEPT

Though Ben Day introduced the change, James Gordon Bennett, one of the great journalists, gets major credit for developing it. Bennett brought out the New York Herald in 1835 to compete with the Sun. Within a short time the Sun was outstripped in its own field in circulation and inventiveness, in life, in color, in verve. When a sensational murder occurred in 1836, Bennett himself covered the story, giving it columns of space day after day; to the material for the story, he invented the news technique now known as the interview.

The major purpose of news

As nineteenth century advanced, the typical newspaper came to be the one whose major efforts went to informing the reader than shaping his opinion. Today about half of the newspapers call themselves politically independent, but even papers with political affiliation report news on both sides of an issue. Democracys success depend on the existence of a responsible press which would inform the people properly, especially of the facts good or bad of the government. As a press developed a sense of obligation toward its readers, it also developed understanding of its constitutional freedom from government control.

The change from political purpose to the ideal of decently objective news presentation did not come overnight.

The Qualities of News

A news story today is more than the sum of the facts that make it; it has characteristic qualities that distinguish it from all other forms of writing. Modern news is accurate, balanced, fair and objective, clear, concise, and current. Almost nobody these days needs to be told of the importance of factual accuracy in news. Almost nobody outside the news profession realizes how enormously difficult accuracy is to achieve. What factual accuracy means is that every statement in a news story, every name and date and age and quotation, every definitive word or expression or sentence must be a precise and unequivocal presentation of verifiable facts.

News is balanced
It is no easy task to report every specific fact accurately, it is an even tougher assignment to put all the facts together in a way that gives a fair picture of the storys total meaning. To be fair to its audience, news must have balance: balance is a matter of emphasis and completeness. News is usually considered complete when the reporter has given a competent summary of all relevant aspects of the news event. For the most part, however, completeness is a matter of balancing selected facts in order to give the reader a fair understanding of the total news picture. In order to write a story that will be fair to the thousands of people who cannot be present at the news event, the reporter must make sure that his story is objective, as well as balanced and complete.

News is objective
News is a factual report of an event as it occurred. The facts must be reported impartially, as they occurred. Theres no excuse in todays news practice for reporting events as they might have been, or should have been, or as somebody wished they had been. Objectivity means that the news comes to the consumer untainted by any personal bias or outside influence that would make it appear anything but what it is. News should be considered inviolable and that all news, not only political news, should be presented without slanting, shading, or tinting. The reporter should not look at events through glasses either rosecolored or smoked; he must report the news in the full light of impartial and scrupulously honest observation.

News is concise and clear

A news story must follow the news form: it must be a unit, concise, clear, and simple. A story that is diffuse, disorganized, or ambiguous in meaning does not have the characteristic qualities of news. News should be direct, terse, and logically coherent; it should be well paced, unified, and, above all, written so clearly that the meaning of the story is absolutely plain.

News is Recent
Definitions of news are incomplete if the element of time is not given major consideration. Emphasis on the time element of a story is necessary because people are aware of the transitory nature of existence; things are always changing, and news consumers want the most recent information on subjects of concern to them. Because news consumers want fresh news, most news stories are labeled today or, at the most distant, last night or yesterday. News media are specific about time, even the time at which news of future events is announced, to show that their news is not only recent but truly the last word on the subject.

News Evaluation and Selection of News

Not everything that happens becomes news. Once in a while, however, trifling incidents get into papers. Who decides? Why should this event become news? What makes some events better news than others? How are stories selected? Although different professionals define news very differently they usually agree on the two main requirements of good news: significance and interest.

The Form and Organization of News Story

The newspaper came into the twentieth century with a new form that was organized to help the reader and assure him a reasonably speedy reading of the news. The two chief developments were the newspaper headline and the leadand-summary story form. The headline is a device for describing briefly, in readily legible type, the most salient points of a story. The lead-and-summary form of news story starts with a quick roundup of the major facts of the story of its central idea or ideas summarized for the readers acceptance or rejection. Then the subordinate facts are summarized and arranged in order of decreasing importance.

Interviews
Though interview stories are of many kinds, three types deserve special attention: 1. The news interview, one which gives consumer competence or expert comment and illumination on a subject current in the news. 2. The personality interview, whose purpose is to let the interviewee reveal his character, his personality, through his own words. 3. The symposium interview, in which the views or attitudes of a number of respondents sometimes a large number are reported.

Developing News
Reporting that gives events meaning and perspective, that reveals fully, that does not leave the consumer asking Why?How? cannot stop at the surface. It must pierce the crust to find gold. It grows from imagination, from energy, from perception, and from passion to find causes and explanation rather than events alone. Color Stories. Color in news, to put it differently, is its liveliness if not its life its hues, its sounds, its flavor, its looks. It is the mood of the crowd that attends the inaugural address; the hurly-burly on the floor of the political convention, the cheers and the anger of football match spectators. It is often (though not always) secondary news not the most important facts, the who-what-why, but the surrounding human or emotive background that throws the major facts into understandable relief. Human interest stories. A story strong in human interest is a story that gives the reader or listener or viewer an immediate feeling of personal involvement in the news situation. Human interest stories, because their appeal is always emotional, have qualities that let almost all consumers identify themselves with the news quickly and closely.

Investigative reporting
Investigative reporting differs from ordinary dayto-day leg work not in methods but rather in the circumstances that surround it in the fact that the tip of idea on which it is based is more commonly obscure than sharply visible; that the reporting itself takes longer, demands more patience and perseverance and often imagination than everyday fact gathering, that the reporter is likely to meet resistance, roadblocks, and even threats or genuine perils; that the deadline is not todays or tomorrows , but a date perhaps months in the future.

Interpretive reporting
This is a daily news analysis or commentary by an expert, usually in Washington, who sought to bring authoritative opinion and relevant background fact to support understanding of current national and international affairs. This is reporting in depth with the response either to develop news of a current event in such a way as to present the necessary background along with the spot news, or to dig out information and present it as supplementary to event to the spot news story. The characteristics that distinguishes interpretive reporting from other types are, first, the purpose, second the depth of reporting that grows from the purpose, third the occasional absence of the spot news element (in a background story developed to make clear and understandable the case). That stories that follow make these and other characteristics evident.